


Initiative

by Rosie J (darthmelyanna)



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-10-14 08:49:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20598017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthmelyanna/pseuds/Rosie%20J
Summary: Elisa Bennet grew up playing Potions & Perils, the world’s most popular roleplaying game. With her dad at the helm of the game’s new edition, she’s now trying to drag it into the digital age. The family’s game store is the perfect place for play-testing, and who better to join in than Charles Bingley, the owner of the new bakery next door? He may be the pastry chef of Jane’s dreams too, but there’s a catch—his best friend is the most obnoxious guy Elisa has ever met.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to putitbriefly, Beckirs, Mad, and the chat regulars who have kindly endured an absurd number of evenings where I have hashed out plot conundrums and character beats. I honor your forbearance, friends.
> 
> The story involves tabletop roleplaying—Dungeons & Dragons being the most well-known example. If you’re not familiar with D&D, fear not. Some of the characters aren’t either!
> 
> Please enjoy Initiative—or as I’ve been calling it, P&P&D&D.

The bell on the door to Longrun Games rang, and Elisa Bennet stepped out of the tiny office behind the counter. Two men had come in together. They were both in their thirties; the shorter one had curly, reddish hair and flour on his jeans. The black man with him was in a sharply-cut navy suit with a charcoal tie. He had a messenger bag slung across his torso, and he was reading on his phone. Elisa put on her retail smile. “Hi, welcome to Longrun Games. Can I help you?”

The shorter man strode up to the counter and extended his hand. “I’m Charles Bingley,” he said. “I’ve just opened up the bakery next door. Figured it was time to meet the neighbors.”

“Oh, it’s good to meet you,” Elisa replied, shaking his hand and dropping the customer service affect. “I’ve been meaning to get over there but last week was crazy. I’m Elisa Bennet.”

Charles studied her face for a second. “I was actually thinking I’d seen you over there on Friday, but maybe not?”

The man on the cell phone finally looked up. “He came over here looking for ‘the hottest girl he’s ever seen.’” The look on his face suggested quite eloquently that he didn’t think she fit the description.

“Darcy,” Charles said, clearly embarrassed. Then he turned back to Elisa. “He didn’t mean—”

Elisa laughed to put Charles at ease, though it wasn’t quite funny. “I think you’re looking for one of my sisters. She came in here with donuts she was raving about.”

Charles looked pleased as punch about that. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around. “So, specialty game store?”

“Yeah,” Elisa said cheerfully. “We sell a lot of games from independent publishers and a lot of educational games. And Potions & Perils, of course, and a couple other tabletop roleplaying games.”

“Okay, I’ve heard of Potions & Perils,” he replied. “Darcy used to play it a lot, apparently.”

Elisa looked at Darcy, who didn’t look up from his phone. He seemed way too stuck-up to be into tabletop roleplaying, but stranger things had happened. “I grew up with it,” she said to Charles. “My parents opened this store when I was a kid. Dad’s worked for the publisher of P&P off and on since before I was born.”

“Your father is Jim Bennet?” Darcy said abruptly.

“Yep,” Elisa said. “I guess you really have played P&P a lot.”

“Not in a long time.” Darcy stuffed his phone in his pocket and turned to Charles. “I’ll be outside.”

He strode off without another word. Once the door had closed with the ringing of the bell, Charles looked at Elisa sheepishly. “Sorry. He’s a great guy once you get to know him.”

“It’s fine, really. But if you haven’t introduced yourself at Goulding Spices across the street yet, you should head over there. They close at five on Tuesdays.”

“When do you close today?”

“Register closes at six, but we open up again from six-thirty to ten. Open play night.”

“Cool, thanks. Nice meeting you, Elisa. Can’t wait to meet the rest of your family.”

She smiled at him again as he left, but once he was out of the store she scowled at the retreating back of his friend. “Yeah, I’m sure he’s a great guy once you get to know him,” she muttered, straightening the stacks of trading cards by the cash register. “I bet not many people get that far.”

Elisa was about to go back into the office when she heard footsteps on the staircase. Her mother entered the store’s main room a minute later. “I thought I heard customers.” Emilia Bennet had always had incredible hearing, which was probably useful for a mother of five.

“Our new neighbor stopped by to introduce himself,” Elisa replied. “Charles Bingley, the guy who just opened Baker’s Dozen.”

“It’s good to have that storefront open again. Bad for everyone else on the street to have it empty for so long,” her mother said. “Jane said he seemed nice.”

“Jane would say Chairman Mao seemed nice.”

Emilia shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t know how twins can be so different.” She came to the counter, where the open buckets of loose dice stood, and she sighed irritably. “Someone’s been mixing the dice again. Ellie, you’d better sort through these and get them all in the right buckets again during open play.”

Elisa puffed out a long breath. It would be a lot of tedious busywork, and time she’d rather spend working on her own stuff. “Yes, Mom.”

Emilia bustled her out from behind the counter. “It’s almost five o’clock. Aren’t you supposed to meet Jane soon? Go, go!”

Elisa was happy to escape. She ducked back into the office to log out of the computer, then grabbed her jacket and dashed out the front door. It was a bright day outside but crisp. She walked briskly up two blocks, to the small accounting firm where Jane worked.

A train was going by half a block beyond as Elisa reached the door where Jane was waiting. “Jay, am I late?” Elisa asked, her voice raised to be heard over the train.

“No, but we’ve still got to hurry,” Jane replied, and without delay they went around the last corner and headed down the hill toward the medical building where Jane had her appointment.

The noise of the train faded, and Elisa looked down toward the medical building. “Do you ever think some people are born for tragedy?” she asked, which, she reflected, was a rather morbid thought for such a beautiful afternoon.

Jane gave her a kind but scolding glance. “You shouldn’t say that kind of thing, Ellie. I know you don’t believe in fate but you don’t have to go around tempting it.”

“Okay, okay,” Elisa replied, taking her sister’s arm as they crossed the medical building’s parking lot. “But it sure seems like Charlotte’s had her share and somebody else’s.”

Jane didn’t dispute it. The sisters trudged up the stairs together to an obstetrician’s suite on the second floor. Their college friend Charlotte Yu and her husband, Adam Lucas, were waiting for them there, hand in hand. “Nervous?” Elisa asked her, while Jane checked in.

“A little,” Charlotte admitted. “But Jane would have told me if something were wrong, I’m sure.”

“Of course she would have.”

A few moments of tense awkwardness passed before Adam asked, “You and Jane walked?”

“Yeah,” Elisa replied, and then they were back to anxious silence.

Jane joined them a minute later and smiled brightly. “How are you two doing?” she asked of Adam and Charlotte.

“Excited. Nervous. Not a great combination,” Adam said.

“You feel like you’re going to throw up, don’t you?”

“Guess you’ve gotten used to that, huh?”

Jane grinned.

A door opened on the other side of the waiting room, and a tech in scrubs called, “Jane Bennet?”

The four stood, which seemed to surprise the technician a little, and they went back together to the exam room. The tech was new to the office, so she did what was very natural and asked who was who in relation to the new mom.

“Elisa is my sister,” Jane explained, “and I’m the surrogate for Charlotte and Adam.”

“Oh!” said the tech. “Well, that explains it.”

Of course, that wasn’t the full story. Charlotte met Elisa and Jane when the sisters were juniors at Northern Illinois and Charlotte was getting her master’s degree in economics. They rented a house together for two years. Then six months after all three graduated, Charlotte was diagnosed with breast cancer. At twenty-seven, she was more than lucky to be diagnosed in time to be treated successfully.

She met Adam during her next-to-last cycle of chemotherapy, when Elisa and Jane took Charlotte to a concert at the Ravinia Festival on one of her good days. He was a sweet guy, and as Charlotte recovered from chemotherapy, they started dating and were soon engaged. They got married about a year later, but Charlotte’s ordeal had taken a toll. When she and Adam wanted to start a family, she had one miscarriage after another.

The night Jane offered to be her surrogate, all of them had cried and hugged and cried some more. Elisa had felt a kind of awe at her twin’s selflessness, along with a really inappropriate level of jealousy that such selflessness rarely occurred to her.

And that was why Elisa was squeezed into this little room in an obstetrician’s office with her sister, her friends, and a tech for the first ultrasound. She might not be selfless enough to give of herself the way Jane did, but she would do everything she could to support them.

There were more tears from everyone during this ultrasound, but these were happy ones. Jane was doing well and so was the pregnancy. Elisa, Charlotte, and Adam stepped out ahead of Jane. “Do you have plans for dinner?” Elisa asked. Charlotte shook her head, and Elisa said, “Then come with us. We’re having _arroz con gandules_, I’m pretty sure. Mom will feed you; it’s how she shows affection.”

“How does your mom feel about this?”

Elisa hesitated. “She’d rather Jane were having her own baby, but she _is_ happy for you. And I’m pretty sure she’s already considering herself honorary grandmother for the baby.”

“Hey, a kid can’t have too many grandmothers, right?” Charlotte replied.

Jane stepped out with her usual smile. “Did Ellie invite you guys over for dinner?”

“She did. Come on, we’ll drive.”

* * *

Elisa and Jane still lived in their parents’ house, a fact which confused and consternated their father, while their mother found it perfectly normal. Emilia had grown up in a house with three generations in it and cousins in and out all the time. Jim seemed to forget about half the time that he had been the first in his family to live on his own before getting married.

Of course, Emilia would have liked it very much if any of her daughters had gotten married by now. The twins were twenty-six, with a reasonable amount of success in their chosen fields. Jane had admitted to Elisa once that she had studied accounting for its stability far more than for any real interest in the job. Elisa had struck out on a somewhat riskier path. A degree in computer science wasn’t much of a risk, but she had majored in it to get a job which didn’t yet exist at Initiative, the publisher of Potions & Perils.

She didn’t like to admit it, but her last name had undoubtedly helped her land the job. But she also came to the table with an ambitious idea to modernize the way P&P was played. Some online systems existed, but these third-party systems were often clunky and slow and limited. Elisa, having grown up around the game and its creative process, felt confident she could integrate it for a generation of mobile users without alienating those who’d come up playing with pencil and paper.

Three months after she started working for the company, her father formally rejoined the editorial staff, taking the helm of the game’s fifth edition, following the contentious reception of its fourth. The fifth edition was due out in the next year, and Elisa was hoping to have the digital platform ready to roll out alongside it. She had a tiny team, but they were dedicated and creative and as excited by the project as she was.

On the nights that Longrun Games hosted tournaments and open play, the shop would close for half an hour or so to let the Bennets have dinner together. They lived in the two stories above the shop, which had been great when the girls were little but was definitely more than snug now. Jim Bennet bought the building back in the late eighties, when the Chicago suburb of Meryton had been on the downturn and property on Main Street was cheap. He’d been working on his doctorate in art history at a nearby college. Buying a rundown building and fixing it up in his spare time had seemed a more promising venture than student housing. He’d always intended to finish it and rent out both the retail space and the two stories above it, but inertia set in somewhere between abandoning his doctorate, going to work for Initiative, getting married, and having five kids. At some point it just made sense to open a game store in the retail space he already owned.

With Charlotte and Adam staying for dinner, the table was a bit tight, even though Catalina was living in the dorms at a college two suburbs over and usually just came home for weekends and laundry emergencies. Emilia fed her guests like they were her own, and fed Jane a little better than that. Elisa could tell her mother was struggling not to ask a million questions right now, but when Jane first told her parents, they’d all agreed that Catalina and Lidia did not need to know about the situation before Jane was past the first trimester. Out of fairness they hadn’t told Mary either.

Charlotte and Adam stayed long enough to help clear the table and for Emilia to box up leftovers for them to take home. While Mary and Lidia washed dishes, Elisa pulled Jane aside, into the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “So I met the cute baker today,” she said.

Jane turned bright red. “Really?”

“Yep. He came into the shop to introduce himself. His name is Charles Bingley. He was also looking for you, or as his friend put it, the hottest girl he’d ever seen.”

Jane leaned back against the door jamb. “Was he as cute as I said he was? It may have been the donuts talking. Those were really good donuts.”

“Yeah, I don’t know about the donuts but he’s that cute. And he’s nice. The friend who was with him may be the most handsome man I’ve seen in my life, but he doesn’t have your guy’s charm.”

Jane frowned. “What did he say?”

“Oh, just seemed to think the whole RPG thing was beneath him, despite knowing enough about P&P to know Dad’s name. And he made it clear that _I_ was not the hottest girl he’d ever seen.”

“Oh, Ellie,” Jane said, laughing fondly, “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.”

Elisa didn’t fight her on it, knowing her sister’s near-pathological need to think well of everyone. Then Jane sighed. “This feels like a really bad time to get involved with anybody, or even think about getting involved with anybody.”

Elisa shrugged. “I mean, I can see that, but aside from putting the cart way before the horse on this one, if a guy gets scared off by this amazing thing you’re doing for a friend, then he doesn’t deserve you. It’s that simple.”

“I don’t think anything is that simple, Ellie.”

“Look, some things in life are complicated. I’ll give you that. But it’s not like you broke up with a guy or hooked up with a guy and then realized...” She paused, making sure their younger sisters were still out of earshot, but lowering her voice all the same. “Realized you were pregnant. You’re doing this for a friend who can’t do this for herself. If a guy doesn’t think that’s commendable, then screw him.”

Jane laughed. “You’re very black-and-white sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know. Want to come down to the store with me to open up for the gamers? I’ve got an exciting evening of dice sorting ahead of me.”

“No need to twist my arm. I’ll come down and help for a bit.”

* * *

Jane was surprised when Charles showed up after the store reopened, but Elisa was decidedly not. He came bearing donuts, a box of twelve, mostly plain glazed but also a couple with sprinkles and the odd bismarck. Jane gave him a radiant smile, and Elisa could swear the man was weak at the knees at seeing that. “Your sister said there would be people here after hours tonight,” he said, “so I thought I’d swing by with these.”

“That’s really sweet of you,” Jane replied. “I usually make some kind of snacks for the players but I had other stuff going on after work tonight, so I didn’t get around to it.”

“Happy to help, then,” he said, beaming.

It was honestly one of the cutest exchanges Elisa had ever seen. Jane took one with sprinkles and Elisa took the bismarck before bringing the box into the game room. Tonight’s crowd was mostly high school students, which was a little odd for a school night, but Elisa knew her mother was on top of it.

Emilia Bennet stood five-foot-four in high heels, but no one ever doubted her ability to manage Longrun Games. Much as Elisa loved her father, she could admit that Jim Bennet was in some ways entirely unsuited to run a store like this. Even his own kids could be a bit much for his sensibilities sometimes and he’d retreat to the basement to organize stock that was already organized. But Emilia, for all her shortcomings, was great at this. She was a great host, making people feel welcome whether they’d just walked into the store out of curiosity or they’d come for the final session in a year-long campaign.

Tonight she was setting out bottles of pop and bowls of snacks, mostly chips and the like. “Aleena,” she said over the low din of players setting up, “those are peanut butter pretzels. Let’s not have any mixups this time, okay?”

“Mrs. B, nothing happened last time,” said the girl, who was more allergic to peanuts than she liked to admit.

“Nothing happened because Alex stopped it from happening,” Emilia argued, before switching tracks. “Jared, how did your physics test go?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Cata had a tutor for physics. I’ll get her name for you.” Before Jared could answer, Emilia saw Elisa and said, “What have you got?”

Elisa hefted the bakery box slightly. “Donuts. Our neighbor heard we were going to have people around after hours and brought some leftovers.”

She set the box down on the table and the kids crowded around, almost before she could get out of the way. Soon her mother was next to her. “That was very nice of him.”

“It was,” Elisa agreed. “He’s still talking with Jay, if you want to meet him.”

“Oh, good.”

Emilia marched around Elisa and out into the main room. Elisa followed her at a short distance. Charles was still talking to Jane, both still smiling easily. Elisa caught up to her mother, hoping to make the interruption less awkward. “Charles, thanks so much for the donuts. The kids will love them, I’m sure,” she said.

“Sure, no problem,” Charles replied.

Elisa gestured to her mom. “I should introduce you. Mom, this is Charles Bingley from Baker’s Dozen. Charles, my mom and our store manager, Emilia Bennet.”

“It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Bennet,” he said, shaking her hand.

“Oh, nonsense, call me Emilia,” she replied. “We were thrilled when construction started next door. That store sat empty for years. That’s not good for anybody on the block.”

“I’m sure. The store next to my downtown location keeps changing hands. It can be frustrating.”

“Oh, you have another location?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s in the Loop, on Madison just off State Street.”

“What brought you out to the suburbs, then?” Jane asked.

“I grew up in Connorville,” Charles replied, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “I like living downtown but I kind of miss being out here too. Thought I’d see what the market is like.”

That explained a lot, but Elisa kept the thought to herself. Growing up in Connorville meant he probably came from money. That was likely how he had a thriving business—in the city, no less—when he was maybe thirty-three. 

Emilia soon stepped away to make sure the teenagers had everything they needed, and Elisa headed to the basement to grab a couple folding chairs and a card table. As she came up again, Charles was waiting at the head of the stairs to take something from her. “Can I help with anything else?” he asked.

Elisa laughed as she handed him the table. “Careful, or Mom will start thinking you work for her too.”

“Just trying to be a good neighbor.”

Elisa caught Jane’s eye and tried not to smile. This guy had it _so bad_ for Jane. “Well, if you don’t have anything better to do, I’ve got buckets of dice to sort,” she said. “Some extra hands would be useful.” She ducked into the office to grab the rolling desk chair. “Jay, do you want—”

“I’m fine in one of these,” Jane replied as she and Charles set up the table.

“Elisa, you’re nicer than my sisters,” he said. “I don’t think they’d offer a more comfy chair to me or each other.”

“Jane’s about the nicest person in the world,” Elisa said. “It’s easy to be nice to her. I’d be harder pressed to make that offer to our youngest sister.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Ellie,” Jane protested. “I’m sure there’s some circumstance where you’d give Lidia that chair.”

“If she busted her tailbone, maybe.”

“So what are we doing?” Charles asked. “You said something about buckets of dice?”

“Yeah, we sell sets of dice but also a la carte,” Elisa explained. A couple at a time, she hauled the buckets to the table, along with a few empty trays from under the counter. “But because they’re open like this, sometimes kids start messing with them and they wind up in the wrong buckets. So we have to do this now and then.”

Before Charles she set the normal and respectable-looking six-sided dice, but also the four-sided. He picked up one of the tiny pyramids and said, “What kinds of dice do you sell here?”

“That’s a d4,” Jane said. “It’s a little strange, yeah.”

He was turning over the blue pyramid with white numbers and frowning. “How do you know what number you rolled? There’s three numbers on every side.”

“It lands with a point up, and every point has one number going around it.” Jane picked up another one and rolled it lightly. “See? That’s a two.”

“Oh.” Charles leaned forward a bit to see what else was on the table. “What have you two got?”

“I’ve got the d20s and d10s,” Jane said. “Ellie has the d8s and d12s, so this one in the middle must be the percentile dice.”

“Percentile dice.”

“Yeah, it’s a little complicated, but they’re essentially the same as the ten-sided dice, just ten through a hundred by tens instead of one through ten.”

He nodded, though he still looked strangely apprehensive. “This is starting to sound more math-related than I imagined.”

“Yeah, our dad’s trying to fix that,” Elisa said, dumping a bucket’s contents into a tray. There was something oddly soothing about the clatter, familiar from childhood. “The last edition of the game had way too much ‘roll this thing, then add this buff, then roll this other thing and subtract it, then divide by the square root of pi, and multiply by the phase of the moon’ going on.”

Charles was laughing by the time she finished. “That reminds me. Fall’s coming and I need to get some pie on the menu,” he said.

“Wait, I’ve got a better idea,” Jane nearly interrupted.

The two looked at each other and said in unison, “Moon pies!”

Charles pulled his phone from his pocket. “We’ll have to call it something else; I think ‘moon pie’ is probably trademarked,” he said, “but this is an excellent idea.”

While they sorted dice, they talked through potential flavor combinations and whether whoopie pies wouldn’t be a bit more expedient, but since Charles and Jane had come up with the idea simultaneously, Elisa thought it would be a shame if they didn’t try it at least once. Charles seemed entirely in agreement with Elisa on that one, and eventually he turned to Jane. “I think she’s right. It has to be moon pies.”

“Yeah, it has to be,” Jane agreed.

A cheer came from the players in the back room, not in relation to this conversation, but it made the three at the card table smile. “It must be fate,” Elisa said, smiling at her sister.

Jane blushed a bit at the double meaning. “You don’t believe in fate, remember?”

“Fate’s just an old friend, keeping you company while you make up your mind,” Charles said airily.

“Well, that’s an interesting take on destiny,” Elisa said.

“Something my friend Darcy said to me once. I always liked it.”

Elisa wasn’t sure what to say to that. The man who’d come into the shop that afternoon hadn’t had nearly the sense of whimsy required to come up with a thought like that. He must have read it somewhere and then said it to Charles to be ironic or something. He seemed like the type who never looked at the world with sincere emotion—like his face would crack if he did more than smirk.

Charles was typing furiously into his phone. “Are you two busy tomorrow night?” he asked. “I’d love to have you around for the moon pie experiment.”

“I can maybe come over for a little bit, but I’ve got a conference call that’s going to run late,” Elisa said. “But Jane’s the one you want, anyway. She loves to bake. I’m competent help in the kitchen but nothing to write home about.”

“Yeah?” Charles said, looking at Jane as he started into the dice again. “I guess you did say earlier you usually make something for these game nights you host.”

“Yeah, I like baking,” she replied, blushing again. “I mean, I’m not as good as you are, I’m sure.”

“Nonsense. I was just dumb enough to go into the restaurant business. If other people like what you make, then you’re good at it.” He could evidently tell she was embarrassed, so he added, “I’d love to have you—_both_ of you come over, at least to try things. Marshmallow fluff is one of the messiest ingredients I’ve ever used, so help is always appreciated.”

“You don’t make your own marshmallow?” Jane blurted out.

“I skipped the candy module in culinary school,” he said, eyebrows raised.

Elisa leaned toward him. “Candy making is where she really excels.”

“Elisa!”

“Well, I’m sold,” Charles said. “I have to get back to the bakery and get some stuff ready for the morning, but this has been lovely. I expect to see you both there tomorrow night.”

“We’ll be there,” Elisa replied, before Jane could try to demur.

They traded cell phone numbers with him before he left, and Charles took a selfie with the two of them. Five minutes later, Elisa’s phone buzzed with a notification from Instagram. Charles had posted the picture to the Baker’s Dozen Instagram feed (which mainly consisted of food porn), with the caption “Meeting my new @bakersdozenmeryton neighbors! Elisa and Jane Bennet of @longrun_games!” The dice featured prominently in it too, which any gamer would recognize immediately.

Elisa showed the picture to Jane. “Well, it’s good promotion for us,” Jane said, clearly trying to keep her tone neutral.

“Yeah, some cross-promotion with him will be good for the store, I bet,” Elisa agreed. “It’s not my best picture. It’s a great one of you, though.”

Jane covered her face with both hands for a minute. “Oh, this is bad.”

“Yeah. He called _dice sorting_ ‘lovely.’ I think there’s something wrong with his brain.”

Jane kicked her lightly under the table. “Be nice.”

“And encroach on your territory? Please.”


	2. Chapter 2

Jane tried not to let it show, but she was only seven weeks pregnant and already exhausted. By the time Charles left the shop she was already flagging. “Ellie, are you okay to finish up here?” she asked.

“Of course,” Elisa replied, looking concerned. “You should have taken the rolling chair, Jane.”

“No, no,” she protested. “I knew why you were offering but that’s not—I don’t think that’s why I’m tired. I think it’s half because I gave up coffee.”

She smiled, which only made Elisa skeptical. “Go up and relax, okay? I’ll take care of all this. Don’t worry about me.”

Not wanting to disturb the players in the game room, Jane went up the front stairs. These stairs only went up to the second floor, so to get to her bedroom on the third, she had to pass by three small bedrooms, a bathroom, and the living room and kitchen. Her mom was cleaning out the pantry, while her dad sat at the kitchen table with a laptop and copious notes. Emilia stopped almost as soon as Jane entered the kitchen. “Janey, you look worn out,” Emilia said. “Sit, sit! Jim, make room for her to sit.”

“I haven’t taken up the chairs, Mimi,” Jim said.

Still, he moved some papers around so Jane could sit without disturbing anything. Emilia stood beside her and felt her forehead, like she was a little child again. “I was like this with all five of you,” she said. “It gets easier in the second trimester.”

“I hope so,” Jane replied, taking her mother’s hand as it rested on her shoulder.

“Just hope it’s not twins. One at a time is a lot easier.”

“Well, there was no indication of twins on the ultrasound today. Supposedly they could tell by now.”

Emilia kissed the top of her head before moving back to the pantry. “I suppose you’ll know soon enough.”

“Big thing you’re doing for Charlotte,” Jim remarked, looking at Jane over the rims of his glasses.

“I know, Dad. I knew when I volunteered,” Jane said. “But I don’t think this is something you’re ever ready for.”

“He isn’t going to understand,” said Emilia. “Men never do.”

“Oh, I remember not being ready,” Jim said, putting his highlighter down. “I don’t think we were prepared for one baby, and there we were with twins.”

Jane smiled. “And yet you managed.”

“We did, with a lot of work and a lot of help.” Jim sniffed suspiciously and turned back to his papers. “Can you look at this draft? I think the minstrel team has lost some perspective on it.”

“Did Ellie agree with you?”

“I haven’t asked her to look yet. I want her to play this class when we start playtesting.”

Jane nodded as her father turned the laptop for her to see. After a quick scan, she said, “I take it you think it’s overpowered?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

Jane drummed her fingers on the table. “Well, most people play minstrels as a support character, or even as kind of a joke. So maybe it doesn’t matter if they’re a little overpowered. On the other hand, you could only let them change spells when they level up. Make them pick more carefully and stick with them, instead of changing with a long rest and stocking up on combat spells when you know you’re going into battle soon.”

Jim nodded as he jotted things down. “Good, good.”

“It seems like a huge improvement over the fourth edition.”

“It’d almost have to be,” he grumbled.

Jane smiled a little. Her dad had left day-to-day work at Initiative just after the release of the game’s third edition. The store was doing well, and the Bennets’ marriage wasn’t. His step away from Initiative had been a step toward a happier home life for them all. But now that all the kids were out of high school, it made sense for him to rejoin the company.

Jim turned back to his editing, and Emilia shooed Jane up the back stairs so she could rest in a quieter place. The third floor had a second bathroom along with another small kitchen, a vestige of the days when Jim intended to split the floors into separate apartments to rent. Now it housed the washer and dryer. On the street side of the house was their parents’ bedroom. The living room for that apartment had been converted into a relatively large bedroom, which Jane and Elisa had shared ever since they moved back after graduation.

Feeling distinctly worn, Jane flopped down on her bed, and there she stayed until Elisa came up to join her. Elisa poked her head around the antique screen that divided the room and said, “Hey, everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired,” she replied, her hands folded over her abdomen. “Mom says it may be my default state until I hit the second trimester.”

Elisa came around the screen and lay down next to her. “Are you regretting this, Jay?”

“No, of course not,” she said automatically. When Elisa just stared at her, she sighed. “I’m not. Really, I’m not. It’s just so much. I think it would be overwhelming if this were my baby. So on top of that I’ve got this responsibility for Charlotte’s baby. It’s a lot to live with.”

Elisa laid one of her hands on Jane’s. “You know I’m here for you however I can be, right?”

“Of course.” Jane swallowed hard against the lump forming in her throat. “I think it’s just that seeing the ultrasound today made it feel more real.”

“More real than the last two weeks of morning sickness?”

Jane laughed and squeezed her sister’s hand. “I’m so glad I have you with me for this, Ellie.”

Elisa kissed her cheek and got up, declaring her intention to make some popcorn and watch a movie. Jane’s phone vibrated in her pocket, so she fished it out. It was a text from Charles.

“Great meeting u and ur sister again! I’ll be in till 8 tmrw. Stop by whenever!”

Jane smiled softly at her phone and bit her lip. Despite Elisa’s opinion on the matter, Jane couldn’t help thinking all of this was very, very complicated. She’d only spent an hour with Charles but she liked him a lot. He was sweet and funny, not to mention cute and really good at making donuts. She definitely wanted to get to know him better. And she wasn’t blind. She could tell he was interested too.

But she and Charlotte had made an agreement. Charlotte had miscarried again and again, and she was rightly unwilling to let more than a few very close family members know about their plans until Jane was in her second trimester. Jane wouldn’t violate that for anything, but it made some aspects of her future tenuous indeed.

She was still staring at his text message when Elisa returned with popcorn. While Elisa talked about movie options, Jane typed, “Sounds great. I’ll be there around 6:30. Should I bring my candy thermometer?”

Then she plugged her phone in on her nightstand and willed herself to believe this wasn’t a mistake.

* * *

The next morning she woke to find fifteen texts from Charles, all sent around four in the morning. The first half were nigh on indecipherable, while the second half were apologetic as he realized he was sending texts to a person who wasn’t up yet. “So so sorry!” one of them read, followed by a series of wailing emoji. “Hope I didn’t wake u!”

In this series of texts, clearly sent when he was half-asleep himself, there was no answer to her question the previous night about the candy thermometer. Jane realized that he’d sent them when he got up—he was a baker, so it was probably early to bed, early to rise for him. She might have sent her text last night after he went to bed, which made her feel bad about it. Then again, he hadn’t answered till he got up, so hopefully he used do-not-disturb mode the way she did.

Breakfast was already well underway when Jane went down to the kitchen. Elisa handed her a bowl of cereal and said, “I think I’ve discovered a downside to having a bakery next door.”

Jane blushed and tried to hide it. Fortunately her father didn’t look up as he answered. “And what’s that, El?”

“I slept with the window open last night. They were making cinnamon rolls when I woke up.”

“That’s a lot of carbs right across the alley,” Lidia said darkly.

“We’re fortunate to have a neighbor again, Lidi,” said Emilia. “And the owner was nice enough to mention us on Instagram yesterday.”

Lidia rolled her eyes. “I saw that picture with Jane and Elisa. So which one of you does he have the hots for?”

“Lidia!” the twins cried in unison.

“Aha! Must be Jay, as usual.”

“You’re going to be late for school,” Elisa said crossly.

“So?”

“So get out the door,” Emilia said, taking away the remnants of English muffin that Lidia had doubtless been picking at for a while.

“Mom! I’m not done!”

“You are,” she said. “You’re going to miss your train if you don’t leave now.”

Lidia huffed, but seeing no support in the room, she stomped away from the table, muttering something obscene in Spanish. “Do you think I don’t know what that means?” Emilia called after her.

The back door slammed a minute later, and peace prevailed. “Did you know what that meant, Mom?” Mary asked.

Emilia turned a sour look in her direction. “We may not have spoken Spanish in the Flores house, but we did swear in Spanish.”

Mary seemed ready to say something else, but Jane shook her head. Not growing up bilingual had always been a sore spot for their mother. Their grandparents weren’t ashamed of being Puerto Rican, but they were of a generation that left the island and tried to help their kids assimilate by not speaking Spanish with them. Emilia and her brother Eduardo both learned as adults, but it wasn’t the same as growing up with the language in their ears.

All the Bennet girls had taken Spanish classes as children and in high school, though. If nothing else, Emilia wanted them to be able to talk to their grandparents in Spanish and to get around Puerto Rico competently when they visited extended family. Mary majored in the language and was working on a doctorate in Spanish literature. Elisa’s first assignment at Initiative had been writing the Spanish user interface for their existing website, something which probably should have been done ten years earlier. Jane was the one Spanish speaker in the accounting office where she worked, and it was always a nice change of pace for her when she got to put it to use.

There was no such luck today, though. The day seemed to drag, even more than the previous day did. Yesterday she had only a medical test to worry about. Today she had… something severely lacking in definition.

“Hey, Jane,” her boss said to her, as she was shutting down her computer for the night, “are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied. “Is something—have I been—or my work—”

“No, no, your work has been fine,” Nick said. “You just seem a little tired lately.”

“Gave up coffee a few weeks ago.” She zipped up her purse and smiled. “I’ll get used to it soon, I’m sure.”

Nick looked like he might not believe her, but he didn’t press it. Jane made a quick exit anyway. This was going to be easier when she got through the first trimester and Charlotte gave her the okay to start telling people.

Dinner that night was quiet. Elisa was still at work and Lidia was engrossed in something on her phone. Afterward Jane helped wash dishes as usual, then grabbed her candy thermometer out of a drawer. “Ellie and I are going to the bakery tonight,” she told her parents. “Charles was talking about some new menu items last night and wanted someone to come taste things.”

Her dad looked at her strangely. “Charles?”

“The bakery owner,” Emilia said. “I told you about him yesterday, I know.”

“Ellie’s meeting you there?” Jim said.

“Yeah, once her conference call ends.”

“All right. See you in a few hours, then.”

Jane grabbed her phone from her purse and texted Elisa as she headed down. She’d barely hit the sidewalk when Elisa texted back that she thought she’d be at least another hour. “You’re not doing this on purpose, are you?” Jane texted.

The reply came almost immediately. “Why would I do that?”

“Yeah, right,” Jane said to no one as she put her phone away. Quickly she crossed the alley between the stores and knocked on the door to the bakery.

A few seconds later, Charles appeared from the back and jogged up to the front door. “Hey, right on time!” he said. “Sorry, I was in the back.”

“Yeah, no problem,” she replied. “I was just next door, so there was no excuse to be late.”

“You helping out with the game store?”

“Oh, I, uh, I live there. Actually none of my siblings have moved out yet. We live in the two floors above the store.”

“Wow.”

“I know, it’s kind of weird.”

“Nah, it’s kind of nice,” Charles said. “I’m just trying to imagine liking either of my sisters well enough to live with them.” At her look, he said, “No, no, don’t get me wrong. I love them both. They’re just a lot to live with.”

“Well, I have four sisters, so that’s a lot to live with too.”

“Wow, there’s five of you?”

“Yeah. Ellie and I are fraternal twins. Although she calls us sororal twins. I’m not sure that’s actually a word.”

Charles laughed. “Well, let’s get started.”

“Did you need a candy thermometer?” Jane asked, following him back into the kitchen. “I brought mine just in case.”

“Oh man, did I not actually answer your question? I have got to stop answering texts when I wake up,” he said. “The other day I was texting Raoul—he’s my head baker in the downtown store—I was texting him something about baking ratios and only got about half of it in the text. Made no sense. Would have made rye flour soup.”

Jane laughed, and the sound echoed through the kitchen as they stepped inside. “Maybe you’d do better with homing pigeons.”

“No, I’d do worse. My buddy Darcy refuses to attempt to read my handwriting. And that’s pretty bad, considering his dad was a doctor.”

Charles opened a drawer and pulled out a green puck-like object that Jane recognized immediately. She pulled her own from her purse, though her thermometer was purple. “Great minds, I guess,” she said.

“It’s the only thermometer worth buying, honestly,” he replied, hunting for the probe to plug into it. “We’ve still got some moving pains. We use instant-read thermometers more than this probe one, so I’m not totally sure where the probe is.”

“Here, use mine, then,” she said, handing the long cord over. “I’ve got a clip for the saucepan too.”

“That’s it. You’re hired.”

Much as she tried not to, she blushed.

They got started on the marshmallow fluff together. The bakery had two of those enormous stand mixers, but Charles pulled out a normal one that they used for small batches. In it he combined gelatin with very cold water, while Jane got the sugar and corn syrup into a saucepan with more water. For a few minutes she left it covered over moderate heat, and Charles leaned back against the opposite counter. “So far I’m wondering why everyone in culinary school is scared of candy.”

“It’s kind of old-fashioned, I guess. And there are some things about it that are dangerous. I started doing this with Grandma Bennet when I was really young, so it just doesn’t scare me. But don’t you ever make meringue? This is really similar.”

He frowned at her. “I make meringue pretty often but usually with a double boiler. You whisk the sugar and egg whites till it’s up to temperature and then beat to stiff peaks off the heat. And if I’m making meringues, it doesn’t get heated at all until it hits the oven.”

“Oh! Yeah, I always forget that there’s more than one kind of meringue. This is like Italian meringue.”

“Right, the double boiler one is Swiss, I think, and the other one is French,” he said, standing away from the counter to look at the pan on the stove. “How are we doing?”

The mixture was boiling vigorously. “Give it another minute. If we take the lid off now, it’s liable to boil over.”

“And then?”

“Then we put in the temperature probe and beat the egg whites while we wait.”

“Egg whites?”

“Oh! Never mind. We were talking about meringue.”

Soon the bubbling had subsided. Jane removed the lid and got the thermometer in place and set the alarm for the right temperature. Meanwhile Charles had options ready for the cookie part of the moon pies. “I was thinking about something red-velvety for the cookies, but that probably wouldn’t have enough structure. Plus you’d have to dip it in white chocolate and that’s no good,” he said, as he pulled a tray out of the walk-in. “So I made brown sugar cookies. I thought the brown sugar might be a little more complex, to offset the marshmallow.”

“Well, marshmallow can be pretty complex if you use good vanilla,” Jane pointed out. “And of course, you could use other extracts for flavoring. There’s no way to make these good for you, but they can definitely be more interesting than storebought.”

“Jane, you’re standing in a bakery. Half the stuff I sell isn’t good for you,” Charles said. “But honestly, who cares about that? Life’s too short not to buy a cupcake now and then.”

Jane smiled softly, and for long moments they stared at each other. He really was quite handsome—curly red hair, bright hazel eyes, and countless freckles. He was tall but not gangling, muscular but not hulking. There was a gentleness about his bearing which struck her as very precious.

The silence turned almost tangible, full of an exquisite tension. Charles reached forward tentatively, biting his lip. And just when his fingers touched hers, the thermometer started beeping.

They both jumped; Jane’s hand flew away from his and to her chest. “I always forget how loud that is.”

“I think it’s echoing in here,” Charles said, yanking the thermometer down from the range hood with some force. The magnet on the back was pretty strong. He disconnected the probe connector, and the beeping stopped. “Okay. What do we do?”

Jane willed herself to stop trembling as she turned the burner off and removed the probe from the pan. “Turn the mixer on.”

“Speed?”

“Low.”

She grabbed a towel next to the stove and wrapped it around the saucepan’s handle. As she brought it to the now-running mixer, Charles asked, “Do you need me to do anything? I’d love to post this on Instagram if I can.”

“Yeah, go ahead,” she said. “This is a one-person job right now.”

“Cool.”

Charles started taking pictures as Jane slowly and carefully poured the hot syrup into the mixer. “You don’t want to dump everything in at once,” she explained. “If we were making meringue or divinity, you’d be pouring this into egg whites and you’d need to temper them.”

“Right.” Charles kept quiet until she had finished and set the pan back on the stove. “You know they call this stuff napalm in culinary school.”

“Well, you certainly don’t want to touch it,” Jane said. She turned the speed up on the mixer and said, “This is going to take ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Can we leave it unattended?”

“I wouldn’t leave the floor or anything.”

“Nah, let’s just sit down out front. Do you want some hot cocoa?”

Jane smiled, grateful that he hadn’t offered coffee. “Sure.”

She set a timer on her phone as she walked back to the front of the shop, where a few tables were set up. She pulled two chairs down from one of the tables, and she was about to sit down when she spotted her sister through the large window. Elisa waved, and Jane went to let her in. “You’re earlier than I was expecting,” she said, holding the door.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Jane smacked her arm lightly for that.

“Is that your sister?” Charles called from behind the counter.

“Hey, Charles!” Elisa said, grabbing another chair for herself.

“Hey, Elisa. I accidentally made too much hot cocoa. You want some?”

“Sure. It’s almost chilly out there.”

“Have you eaten?” Jane asked.

“No, but it’s no big deal.”

Charles emerged moments later with a tray. He set three mugs of cocoa down, along with a croissant on a plate. “Can’t have moon pies before eating something vaguely dinner-like.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of impossible?” Elisa asked, while Jane blew over her mug to cool the cocoa.

“All the time. Usually it’s not a compliment. How did your conference call go?”

“Oh, it went. It was a lot of explaining technology to people who think they understand more than they do.”

Charles smiled. “This sounds like Darcy complaining about armchair lawyers.” Elisa didn’t say anything, focusing on her croissant instead. “So what is it you do, anyway?”

“I work for the publisher of Potions & Perils,” she said. “I’m a web developer. I started off just working on their website—online store, that kind of thing—but then I pitched an idea I’d been working on in my head for a while, to build an online play system, both browser- and app-based. There are some online systems but they’re all kind of clunky.”

“How’s it usually played?”

“Mechanically? Pencil and paper,” Jane replied. “You have a character sheet—”

“Which is really several sheets,” Elisa put in.

“And that has the information about your character. Statistics about personality traits, defensive attributes, attacks you can execute, that kind of thing.”

Charles suddenly looked around them to the street. Jane looked too and saw a very tall black man in a suit approaching the door. “Oh, I forgot Darcy was coming,” Charles said. “Sorry, ladies, I’ll be right back.”

He hopped up, and Jane saw a dark look on her sister’s face. “Be nice,” she whispered.

“I can be civil,” Elisa muttered.

The man was soon inside, with a surprised look for the Bennets. “Charles, I didn’t know you’d have company.”

“Yeah, I forgot we were meeting tonight. But come on in. You met Elisa Bennet yesterday; this is her sister Jane. Ladies, this is Will Darcy.”

Will Darcy was taller than Charles by three or four inches. Jane stood up to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said.

“Likewise,” Darcy replied. Then he nodded at Elisa, who gave a rather false smile in return.

“They’re telling me how Potions & Perils works,” Charles said brightly. “Should be right up your alley.”

“Showing you would be more expedient,” Darcy said. “What’s that whirring noise?”

“Oh, the marshmallow,” Jane said, looking at her phone to see only a minute left on the timer. “I need to take a look at it.”

“Right! I need to temper the chocolate too,” said Charles.

Jane headed back to the kitchen and the others followed. Elisa had picked up both their mugs of cocoa. The four gathered in a row down the galley kitchen, and while Charles started melting chocolate in the microwave, Jane felt the bottom of the mixer bowl gingerly. “Okay, it’s lukewarm now,” she said. “Vanilla?”

“Elisa, it’s the cabinet behind you.”

Elisa found it and handed it over. Jane splashed some in, which amused Charles. “And here I thought candy was a science.”

“It is!” said Jane. “I found a quote from an article about caramel once that described the names of all the flavor compounds in caramel. Caramelene, caramelane, caramelin, caramelan, caramelen, and about a hundred others along those lines, which the author said science had ‘invented in a fit of despair.’”

Elisa and Charles burst out laughing at that, and even the sober-looking Darcy cracked a smile. A minute later Jane turned the mixer off. “Okay, that’s done.”

Charles was checking on the microwaved chocolate. “How are you with a pastry bag?”

“I can’t really do anything fancy but I can do this much.”

“Okay, Darcy, the pastry bags are above you. And she needs a coupler and the biggest round tip you can find.”

Darcy found the bags soon enough, but Jane had to point out the other pieces she needed. “I’ll need a big spoon or spatula too, and some kind of cooking spray.”

“Cooking spray?” Darcy repeated, grabbing that while Jane put the pastry bag together.

“Yeah, this stuff is just about the stickiest stuff imaginable,” Elisa said, hunting for a spoon.

“El, remember the time you were helping me and you insisted that nonstick spatula would be fine?” Jane asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Elisa said. She’d found a spoon and was now spraying it liberally over the sink.

“What happened?” Darcy asked.

“We had to get a second spatula to rescue the first.”

He smiled a bit more broadly at that. “That’s pretty bad.”

Elisa shrugged. “Live and learn.”

Soon Jane and Charles had an assembly line going, with Jane piping the filling onto a cookie and covering it with a second, while Charles dipped them in chocolate. He sent Darcy into the walk-in with a tray of them about halfway through. By the time they had filled and coated all the cookies, that first batch was ready. Charles handed Jane the first one. “Well, how’d we do?”

She bit into it and started nodding as he served the others and himself. “I mean, the chocolate needs to set a little more, but this was such a good idea.”

By the time they’d all polished off their moon pies, Charles was talking about more things he could do with marshmallow. But soon he’d remembered the conversation Darcy had interrupted. “So you were telling me about sheets with statistics and all, and I assume that relates to the dice you were sorting.”

“Right,” said Elisa, “so your character has strengths and weaknesses, which are quantified with pluses and minuses. Lots of things you do in the game require a skill check, which is rolling a twenty-sided die.”

“Say you want to climb a wall,” Jane said. “You would roll an athletics skill check. Athletics is a strength skill, so you’d roll a d20, add your strength modifier to the number you rolled, and see if you succeed.”

“So it’s all down to chance?”

“Not quite,” Darcy said. He’d been washing his hands. “That’s the point of the modifier. It represents your skill level in a particular area.”

“It’s easier to show you, really,” Jane said.

Charles nodded and looked at Elisa as he started gathering dishes to wash them. “So you’re trying to turn all of this into an online thing?”

“We’re trying to make it an option for people,” she clarified. “I’m sure there’ll always be people who prefer to play on paper, but online tabletop roleplaying is getting to be pretty popular. My team is developing a program that’ll be technically rigorous and intuitive for players and for game managers too.”

“Map building, tokens, fog of war, that kind of thing?” Darcy asked her.

Elisa seemed surprised by the question. “Yeah. Tracking initiative, hit points, spell slots, ammunition, all of that.”

“Ambitious.”

“It’s needed,” she countered. “Have you ever seen the systems that are available?”

“I messed around with one, maybe eight years ago.”

“They haven’t improved much since then. Somebody should have built one on a modern architecture ages ago. And the mobile apps are even worse. The only ones that are any good from a technical standpoint aren’t comprehensive, and the comprehensive ones are just bad code.”

“When do you plan to launch?”

“Well, the fifth edition is set for release early next year. We’re hoping to have it ready for open beta by then.”

“Ambitious.”

“You said that already.”

Jane caught the discomfort on Charles’ face. She didn’t quite understand why the back-and-forth bothered him but decided to intercede anyway. “So are you familiar with the current edition of P&P, Darcy?” she asked.

He seemed startled to be addressed by someone else. “Ah, no, not really. I stopped playing around the time it came out, but I did look at it. Felt like they doubled down on some of the worst aspects of the third edition instead of correcting them.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty common criticism,” Jane replied. “You know, Dad’s putting together a play-test group before Initiative starts wider play testing. You two would be perfect for this. Charles, you’ve never played before, and Darcy, you haven’t played since the third edition. If you’re interested, of course.”

“Yeah, that sounds great!” Charles said. “Darcy’s told me plenty about it and it’s always sounded like fun.”

“Charles, do you really have the time for this?” Darcy said. “You just opened a new location.”

“You can stay home if you want,” Charles replied. “I’d be happy to come, Jane.”

For a second Darcy made a face at his friend. “I’ll see what my schedule looks like.”

By then Charles had finished with the dishes, and there was no more reason to loiter in the bakery. They left through the back door, and the guys walked the Bennets the short distance to the back entrance of Longrun Games. While Elisa unlocked the door, Jane turned to Charles. “This was a lot of fun.”

“Yeah, we should definitely do this again.”

His hand brushed hers, and Jane’s breath caught in her throat. It was impossible to know what would have happened if they’d been alone, but if he’d tried to kiss her, she didn’t think she’d object.

The door opened; light from the back stairs flooded into the alley. Jane could hear her mother upstairs, telling Lidia sharply to get her textbooks out of the way. The moment was over, and Jane smiled. “Nice meeting you, Darcy.”

Darcy nodded. “Likewise.”

“Good night,” she and Elisa said, almost in unison.

As they stepped inside and shut the door, they could both hear Darcy. “They live there? With their parents?”

The door was closed before they could hear Charles’ reply. Jane cast a tired look at her sister. “Please don’t start.”

“I can’t believe you invited Darcy for play-testing.”

“He’ll be useful for Dad and for you, and you know it.”

Elisa grumbled something that might have been an acknowledgement. “Well, I hope you had fun tonight.”

“I did,” Jane replied. “Charles is very nice.”

“Mmhmm. And very cute and a very good baker and very into you.”

“And I’m very pregnant.”

Elisa waved a hand. “Details.”

But to Jane’s view, that was a very big detail.


	3. Chapter 3

“Who are these people again?” Jim Bennet was asking, staring at a list.

“Dad,” Elisa said, exasperated.

“Well, I don’t know some of them.”

She sighed and stopped what she was doing to come around and look at his list. “You know Charlotte and Adam. They’ve both played off and on for years.”

“Yes, I know Charlotte and Adam,” he said, clearly not happy with her patronizing. “This Charles person is the bakery owner, right?”

“Yes. He’s never played before.”

“Hmm. And the other guy? Darcy something?”

“Something Darcy. I think Charles said his name is Will,” Elisa said. “Anyway, he’s played before, but not since the third edition.” She frowned at the list. “Is six too many players? It’d be awkward, but we could make the group smaller if you really need it to be four or five.”

“No, that’s not it. I think I’m going to need to rely on you and Jane to help me walk everyone through this. We’re changing a lot this time around.”

He wasn’t wrong. In fundamentals the game was what it had always been—develop a character, join a party, play through an adventure. But the mechanics had in some ways changed dramatically. Elisa was pretty sure it was for the best, and so was her father, but the prospect of change rarely went down painlessly in the nerd community (which was itself a problem for another day).

Emilia walked into the kitchen just as the timer on the oven dinged. “Is the bread ready for the oven?” she asked, opening the oven door to check the lasagna.

“I think so, but Jane hasn’t been down in a while,” Elisa replied.

“Jay!” Emilia called.

“Coming!” Jane replied from the back stairs.

A minute later Jane appeared in the kitchen. “The rolls are on top of the refrigerator,” she said, slightly breathless. “They’re ready to go whenever the lasagna’s done.”

“Jim, could you get them down?” Emilia asked, as he was by far the tallest person in the room.

Elisa then found her hands full of a stack of papers while her dad went to get the baking sheet down. Jane, with a sympathetic smile, came over to help her not drop them all. “I take it we’re eating up here?” she asked of their mom.

“I’m not carrying lasagna downstairs,” Emilia replied, as she set the dish on a trivet in the middle of the table, “and your father wants the game up here for some reason.”

Jim slid the tray into the oven and shut it. “The material is still embargoed by Initiative,” he said. “I’m sure your friends won’t post anything on the internet, but I’d rather not run the risk of someone accidentally leaving it lying around downstairs.”

“Seems reasonable. But can I put this stuff down somewhere?” Elisa asked.

Jim looked up, somewhat startled. “Oh, here, I’ll take it.”

Just as he was taking the stacks from the girls, the back doorbell rang. “Ellie, could you?” Emilia said, not waiting for an answer as she moved on to something else.

Elisa trudged down the stairs. Through the window next to the door she could see Charlotte and Adam waiting. She put on a smile as she opened the door. “You’re here!”

“We are!” Adam said, stepping into the tiny entryway and kissing Elisa’s cheek. He headed up the steps hefting the cast iron pan in his hands. “With apple crisp!”

Charlotte stepped in behind him, shaking her head. “He found a recipe online that he had to try.”

“There’s worse things he could do with his spare time.”

“True.” Charlotte inhaled deeply. “Did Jane make your Grandma Bennet’s lasagna?”

“The one and only.” Elisa turned to the stairs. “Adam, toss your coat down when your hands are free!”

She took Charlotte’s coat and was about to hang it behind the door when she saw two more figures approaching. “Charles?” she called.

One of the men waved. “We’re here, we’re here!”

Charlotte headed up, and Elisa held the door for Charles and Darcy. “Hey, thanks for coming,” she said to them as they entered. “Can I take your coats?”

Charles shrugged out of a fleece jacket and handed it to her. Darcy’s overcoat, on the other hand, was Burberry and probably cost more than her car was worth. “Do I smell bread?” Charles asked.

“I’m surprised you can smell that over the lasagna,” Darcy said.

“I’m a baker! I can smell the yeast.”

“Yeah, Jane cooked tonight,” Elisa said. “The bread dough was in the fridge for two days.”

“Even better.”

Upstairs, someone called, “Incoming!” A second later, a black blob came flying down and smacked Darcy in the head.

Darcy caught Adam’s coat before it could hit the floor, looking decidedly miffed by the experience. Adam himself appeared at the top of the stairs and promptly looked mortified. “Oh, man, I am so sorry,” he said, coming down. “That was not a good way to introduce myself. I thought it was just Elisa down here.”

Elisa took the coat from the still-stunned Darcy and said, “Adam, this is Charles Bingley and Will Darcy. Guys, Adam Lucas. He’s married to Charlotte Yu, who’s upstairs.”

“Nice to meet you,” Darcy said, rather flatly, as he shook Adam’s hand. Hopefully Adam wouldn’t be too put off by this behavior. At least Charles was more effusive.

Elisa hung everything on the hooks behind the door and herded the guys upstairs. The stairs more or less opened into the kitchen, which was already pretty crowded before they arrived. Emilia was tossing a salad while Jim was still clearing all the P&P stuff from the table. Jane and Charlotte were in deep conference in one corner of the room, which broke up once everyone had arrived. Jane had one hand to her stomach. Elisa frowned at her, but when Jane caught her gaze, she shook her head. Elisa would have to ask later.

Jane made the last of the introductions. Once everyone had met everyone else and the food was on the table, they crowded in to eat. There were many compliments to Jane on the lasagna and the bread. The latter captivated Charles so much that he half-jokingly offered a job to Jane, who blushed at his praise.

When the table was cleared and dishes were in the dishwasher, Jane and Adam pushed the coffee table aside, and Jim and Elisa gingerly rotated the table ninety degrees, so it was half in the living room and half in the kitchen, with more room to walk around it. Emilia took the laptop that had been on the coffee table and kissed Jim on the cheek. “Have fun,” she said. “I’ll be upstairs finalizing orders. And probably emailing that supplier about the metal dice we ordered months ago.”

She was soon gone, and everyone pulled the chairs to the table’s new position. Jim remained standing at the head. “Thanks to all of you for coming,” he said. “I’m not going to make this too formal. You all know why you’re here. You’re going to be providing a huge favor to me, and I hope I can make it fun for you along the way.”

He started handing out packets of papers at that point. Elisa’s was fished out from the stack specifically and looked to be smaller than the others. Frowning, she started to flip through it. Then she glanced at Charlotte’s and saw that her name was also written on the top sheet. Her dad had customized this for everyone. She wasn’t totally wild about not getting to make all her own decisions, but it was probably smart for whatever he had in mind.

“In your packets you’ll find the descriptions for species and at least one class,” he said. “Some of you I’m asking to play a specific class, but the rest of you have been given three or four options. Normally I wouldn’t mind if multiple people took the same class, but this time I’d prefer to have as much diversity as possible, so we can get as much tested as possible.”

Elisa had already seen the species section, so she flipped past it to classes. She had only one. “Really, Dad? Minstrel?”

“It’s the least finished,” he explained. “I need your expertise on that one.”

“You don’t like the minstrel?” Darcy asked, across the table.

“Oh, it’s not that,” she said. “I was just in the mood for carrying a big stick. Berserker sounded like fun.”

Charles lifted his packet. “I’ve got that and soldier and huntsman. Want to trade?”

“Dad will make you sing. Dad always makes the minstrel sing.”

“Which is why you’re perfect for it, Elisa,” Charlotte said. “You have very little in the way of performance anxiety.”

“What’ve you got?” Elisa asked her.

“Sorcerer, summoner, and holy healer.”

“I’ve got huntsman, pugilist, and mage,” Adam said.

“Hedge-witch-slash-naturalist here,” said Jane.

Jim cleared his throat. “Yeah, we haven’t finalized the name of that one.”

Elisa lifted her glass of iced tea. “What about you, Darcy?”

He met her gaze briefly. “Pugilist, sorcerer, and, uh, holy knight.”

“Holy knight?” Elisa said, half laughing. “Dad!”

“What?” Jim said.

“Oh no,” Jane said under her breath.

“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,” Elisa began to sing. Charlotte elbowed her hard and she stopped. “Hey, if he’s going to make me play minstrel, I’m going to sing at every dumb opportunity I get.”

“Wait till we start the actual game, please,” her dad said.

The group settled down after that, with everyone reading through their packets. As Elisa had the least to read, she soon got up and uncovered the apple crisp Adam had made. “Anyone up for dessert? This smells delicious.”

Everyone but Jane wanted some. “Does this game always involve this much food?” Charles asked as Elisa started dishing up the cobbler.

“Yep,” Charlotte replied. “At least the way it’s played here.”

“No, that was my experience too,” Darcy said. “A session is usually long enough to warrant it.”

“I’ll be sure to bring something next time,” Charles said.

Charlotte got up to help pass out the apple crisp. Knowing why her sister turned down something with apples, Elisa grabbed a half-empty carton of Ben and Jerry’s from the refrigerator and handed it to Jane along with a spoon. But Charles, seated next to Jane, was startled by it. “You don’t like apples?”

Jane had a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth and couldn’t answer right away. Obviously telling Charles that cooked fruit made her nauseated these days would lead to unanswerable questions, so Elisa jumped in. “I knew Jay was craving chocolate,” she said, “and chocolate doesn’t really go with apple crisp.”

Charles seemed more than willing to accept that explanation with no further comment. By then Jane had swallowed and taken the spoon from her mouth. “It’s a twin thing, right?” Charlotte asked.

Jane laughed a little. “Yeah, it’s a twin thing. She always knows.”

“Well, hey, for nine months she was the only company I had,” Elisa said.

“Eight and a half, but who’s counting?” Jim remarked. “Adam, thank you very much for the dessert. Have any of you made up your minds, or do you need to talk about what the classes entail?”

“I think I’m going to play a minstrel, Dad,” Elisa said.

Her father rolled his eyes and sighed, but somewhat to her surprise Darcy laughed softly.

The moment passed quickly enough. Charlotte had decided to go with holy healer, while Adam was thinking about pugilist. Jane, like Elisa, only had one class in her packet, but said she preferred the name hedge witch over naturalist. Charles was leaning strongly toward berserker—“hitting things with a big stick sounds like fun,” he remarked—while Darcy said he wanted to play a holy knight.

“You can stop humming that song, El,” Jim said, as he passed more papers around. “These are your character sheets. If you’ve got ideas, let’s write them down. And we can answer questions tonight. I’d rather do that in person. I have a bad track record when it comes to answering email.”

Elisa met her sister’s eye and they both suppressed smiles. “Bad track record” was an incredibly generous way of putting it.

Elisa had seen the new edition’s character sheet before—figuring out how to do a digital version that allowed for both automated and manual options had been a major hurdle for her group—but she was still surprised by its elegance. Gone were the level-specific modifiers of the last two editions. Armor class, the number which determined how high an enemy had to roll to succeed on a hit, was now largely static. One could get better armor or carry a shield or find a magical object which would boost that number, but it was no longer tied to levels.

A glance at the table of levels for minstrels told Elisa that other things had been streamlined too. The byzantine system of spell points had been replaced with spell slots, which seemed much simpler than trying to figure out whether it was worthwhile to cast one really powerful spell or if it was better to cast a bunch of less powerful ones. She liked some of the abilities gained at later levels too. But it occurred to her as she read that this minstrel class was really powerful. Absurdly powerful, even. She’d always treated the minstrel as something of a joke. One could hardly build a fantasy world without a bard, but this was moving the archetype away from court jester and more toward David Bowie in _Labyrinth_.

She wondered if her father was wanting her to see if the class build was broken. That could be a lot of fun.

They ended the night with trying to schedule their first proper session. Considering Charles kept pretty early hours, Darcy was a lawyer, and Elisa was a web developer with a team of likeminded individuals who thought nine in the morning was too early for teleconferences, it was no small feat to settle on a day. Finally they settled on the third Sunday in October. “I can’t stay too late that night,” Charlotte said by way of caveat. “I have a CT scan the next morning.”

“A CT scan?” Darcy blurted out.

“Yeah, I had breast cancer three and a half years ago,” she said, without a trace of hesitance. “My oncologist still has me doing regular imaging.”

“Ah,” he said, looking as awkward as ever. “I hope everything’s going well, then.”

“Thanks.”

“We will get you out at a decent time that Sunday, Charlotte,” Jim said, bringing the conversation back around. “You guys are welcome to stick around for a while to talk things over, but let’s get the table back where it belongs.”

The chairs and table were soon back in the kitchen. There was space for everyone in the living room, but for some reason Darcy stayed at the table. Elisa frowned at him. Really nothing about him looked like he wanted to be there. He hadn’t even loosened his tie. He looked absurd and it annoyed her. If he wanted to be in this group, then he needed to _be in the group_.

As she walked past the table to a beanbag chair in the living room, she said, “Darcy, I know Adam accidentally hit you with his jacket, but I promise he doesn’t bite.”

Darcy looked up, startled. “Oh, it’s not—I wanted the space on the table.”

“Floor’s free,” she said archly.

As he glanced down at his no-doubt expensive pants, Jane said, “El, not everyone’s as fond of the floor as you are.”

Darcy smiled, which was irritating. “Maybe next time.”

* * *

By the day of the first session, Elisa had developed her minstrel character. Mariela Halann was half-elf, half-human, and all con artist. The charm of a minstrel lent itself quite easily to such a character. Mariela had been in jail for half a dozen schemes, the most recent of which was selling passage to an island that didn’t exist. But her crimes were generally against the rich, and while she wasn’t exactly Robin Hood, Mariela was a lot more useful to the poor and downtrodden than she liked to advertise.

It would be a fun character. Elisa hadn’t played a trickster character in quite some time, so it would be an interesting persona to try on. She was also beyond suspecting that the minstrel class was way, way overpowered. Proving it would be entertaining.

Lunch that Sunday was even more crowded than their dinner a week ago. Catalina stayed through lunch before driving herself and her laundry back to campus. Mary and Lidia also ate with them. Mary monopolized one end of the table with a long monologue about feminist interpretations of _Don Quixote_. Elisa had, sadly, heard all of that before, making her glad she wasn’t down there for the encore, but she felt bad for Jane and Charles, who clearly wanted to talk to each other but were forced by their own innate politeness to hear Mary out.

Not that Elisa thought she was that much better off. Lidia was on her right, squeezed so close they were practically sharing a chair. “So what’s up with Jay-Jay and the cutie down there?” Lidia asked, not quite quietly enough.

“We’re not talking about this,” Elisa said.

“Too many people around?”

“No, we’re not talking about this, ever. Unlike you, I’m not an unrepentant gossip.”

“Mom! Ellie called me an unrepentant gossip!”

“Well, you are,” Emilia said. “Here, have some more potatoes. Charles, what did you call this dish?”

Elisa rolled her eyes. That was typical. Lidia tried to cause a scene and their mom just tried to distract her with food.

“So when are you going to hire me?” Lidia asked, sufficiently distracted from Jane and Charles.

“For the hundredth time, Lidia, I can’t hire you,” Elisa said. “I don’t have the budget to hire anyone, or the standing to get away with hiring my sister. Besides, you haven’t graduated yet.” She didn’t add that while Lidia seemed to be a talented programmer, it wasn’t clear to anyone that she had the dedication to stick with a project.

“Then hire me as an intern!” Lidia said.

“I’m sorry, but no,” Elisa replied, trying to be firm without being mean about it. “Unpaid internships are exploitative.”

“You can just tell me no, Ellie. You don’t have to make a political statement about everything.”

“I’m not making a political statement, and I’ve been telling you no for weeks.”

Lidia made noise about sticking around for the game, but fortunately Dad shot that down. “This is not a spectator sport,” he reminded her.

“Then what about those people who film their games for YouTube?”

“They still don’t have a live audience.”

Fortunately she didn’t have the tenacity to stick around and continue that argument. Once lunch was over and the younger Bennets had left, Elisa found herself standing next to Darcy. “I heard your sister talking to you about an internship,” he said.

Great, he’d been eavesdropping on her. That was charming. “An internship that doesn’t exist,” she said. “She just wants me to hire her so she doesn’t have to go through the trouble of finding a job.”

“Well, you do work for a company your father helped get successful.”

She allowed herself a moment to scowl into her glass of iced tea before composing herself. “I do, but getting the job wasn’t easy. It especially wasn’t easy to convince them to give me the lead on the digital platform project.”

“You said you pitched the idea, right?”

“Right. Even after they green-lit the project, some of the editorial board weren’t totally on board with it. They didn’t give me full funding. I had to raise the rest on Kickstarter.”

She glanced at him, particularly at his clothes. It was the first time she’d seen him not dressed for work, and his clothes still reeked of wealth. His jeans looked tailored and his button-up shirt wasn’t exactly from a clearance bin. This guy might work hard as a lawyer, but he didn’t seem to be struggling to pay off student loan debt or anything, and he certainly hadn’t ever had a job that required crowdfunding to support its own existence.

“All right, let’s get started,” Jim said, once the non-players had left the room.

Elisa had really intended to sit between Jane and Charlotte, but Darcy walked over to the table with her and pulled out a chair for her. She held back her inclination to sigh. Why was he like this?

* * *

The opening of the game was a bit boilerplate: an ancient mage had gathered a group of adventurers to travel to a cave and retrieve a treasure for him. Elisa’s half-elf character, Mariela, had joined up to evade arrest for a crime she’d definitely committed. She was keeping that information under wraps for now, but she strongly suspected that Jane and Charlotte’s characters would get it out of her eventually.

Jane’s hedge-witch-slash-naturalist was a halfling named Philomena Swiftwhistle; Charlotte’s holy healer was a woodland elf named Antinua Liadon. Charles had settled on a berserker after all, a dwarf called Morgran Morigack. (He admitted privately to Elisa that he had asked Jane for help with the name. Elisa had already assumed as much, as the heavy alliteration was Jane’s calling card.)

Adam’s character was no surprise—Kipper Leffery, gnome mage—but Darcy’s holy knight was unexpected. Elisa expected some haughty high elf, but Kundé Agolo was a young human. Because he was sitting next to her and she was a little annoyed by that, she did some covert snooping of the front page of his character sheet. His character’s background was a disinherited nobleman seeking a return to his old life. Elisa tried not to roll her eyes. Maybe Darcy’s character wasn’t so unexpected after all.

“So in the morning you leave Lannercost,” her dad said, after the opening “scene” was done. Jim stood up, reached over the screen hiding all of his notes, and turned over the large paper in the middle of the table. It was a grid map, black and white but beautifully rendered. A road wound through forest, leading to mountains in the east. Along the way, other paths splintered off. The city of Aston was about halfway between Lannercost and the mountains, but otherwise no other location was marked.

Charlotte, ever practical, had a question. “Are we walking or do we have transport?”

“Well, since you didn’t hire transport before leaving Lannercost, you’re walking.”

Charlotte made a face, but conceded the point. Elisa, though, smiled at the exchange. Part of the beauty of Potions & Perils was the story was directed almost entirely by the choices of the players. As game manager, her dad would have set pieces ready for the party to encounter, but how they approached those encounters and how they got out of them would be up to the party.

Before the evening was over, they hit their first combat encounter. “Ahead you—wait, do any of you have passive perception of thirteen or higher?” Jim asked.

Everyone looked down at their sheets. Jane’s hand popped up first. “I’ve got fifteen.”

“All right, about a hundred yards ahead, and just off the road, Philomena spots a gaggle of goblins lurking in the hedge.”

“Appropriate, since she’s a hedge witch,” Elisa said.

“It’s my habitat,” Jane replied, holding her hands out.

Spotting the goblins setting up their ambush meant the party wouldn’t be surprised by the attack and lose a turn in combat. “Everyone roll for initiative,” Jim announced.

Everyone but Charles rolled a d20; Charles did so a second later at Jane’s quiet guidance. While Elisa laid out tokens for the players and enemies, Jim ranked everyone, including the goblins, in order by their initiative rolls, and set the battle order. “Kundé, you’re up.”

Darcy sat up straighter—not a lot straighter, Elisa thought, as it wasn’t like he ever relaxed much—and ran his fingers down the attack section of his character sheet. “I attack with my greatsword,” he said.

“Roll to attack.”

Elisa watched him throw the d20. The die was quite pretty, prettier than she would have expected him to go for. It was a marbled blue with silver numbers. She thought they used to sell a set like that at Longrun, but the die was old, thrown a few thousand times, probably. Strange that he would hold on to that, unless he was just too cheap to spring for new dice.

“Fifteen, plus my modifier, which is… four,” he announced.

“Nineteen will hit.”

Jane made a quick explanation to Charles. “Darcy rolled higher than the goblin’s armor class, so his attack is successful.”

“Got it,” he whispered back.

Darcy rolled again with a smaller die and Kundé did five points of damage to the goblin, and the battle was off. Three goblins went next; one of them shot Morgran with his shortbow but barely grazed him.

Kipper and Morgran (or maybe more accurately, Adam and Charles) soon cooked up a plan: they flanked the goblins and each started swinging. Kipper, as a spellcaster, hit three of the goblins with _roar of thunder_, knocking two of them prone and dealing damage to all. Morgran took a swing with his mace and finished one of them off.

Jane clapped for Charles briefly before taking her own action. Her character was too far away from the fight to engage immediately—halflings couldn’t move quite as far on a turn—but Philomena did move in. A goblin in the back fired his shortbow at Philomena but the arrow whizzed past.

Then Charlotte was up. Her holy healer, Antinua, fired her crossbow and took down one of the other goblins which Kipper had struck with his spell. The last goblin took a swing at Kundé with a scimitar and did eight damage.

It was a lot of damage for a first-level character. He couldn’t have more than twelve hit points total. Elisa had only rolled a four for initiative, meaning she was the last to go. She drummed her fingers on the table for a moment. The minstrel had a special magic ability to grant five temporary hit points to other characters, and Kundé probably needed it.

“I give _minstrel’s mantle_ to Kundé,” she said.

Darcy seemed a little startled. “That’s—that’s temporary hit points?”

“Yeah, five. Dad wrote the Dungeon of Doom campaign from the second edition of the game. I do not trust him to build an encounter this easy.”

The table laughed as Darcy pencilled in the extra five points. “That’s a bonus action,” Jim said to Elisa. “Anything else? Preferably not meta-gaming?”

“Yeah, I move forward and attack the goblin next to Morgran with my longsword. Two-handed swing.”

Her die stopped on a twenty and Elisa threw her arms up in the air. “Natural twenty!”

“What does that mean?” Charles asked.

“It’s a critical hit,” Darcy replied. “It means she does double damage.”

“And rolling a one is a critical fail,” said Jane. “If she’d done that, she might have gotten her sword stuck in a tree or something.”

Elisa rolled for damage, came up with fourteen, and killed the goblin in one shot.

They made quick work of the rest of the goblins. In searching the bodies, they found a map to a village a little distance off the main road, scribbled with half a dozen names. Elisa jotted them down in her new campaign notebook. But the last one threw her off-guard. “Wait, I know that name,” she said, half in character and half as herself. “That’s the name of Mariela’s—I mean, that’s the name of my mentor.”

“Could we get that list again, Mr. Bennet?” Darcy asked.

Jim repeated the names, and the group realized that all of the names were familiar to the group, each of them appearing in a character’s backstory. “That can’t be a coincidence,” Jane said.

“I just got a chill,” said Adam.

“Uh, I think we should go to the village,” Charles said.

“I’m with the dwarf,” Elisa replied.

“You don’t think this sounds like a trap?” Darcy asked.

“Oh, I absolutely do,” Elisa said, “but forewarned is forearmed.”

* * *

The session had to wrap up shortly after the fight was over. Charles kept very early hours, and Jane was looking tired. Adam and Darcy moved the table back while Charles washed the dessert plates. Meanwhile Elisa went to her dad. “Well?” she prompted.

Jim nodded. “That went well. Hopefully next time we’ll have some more in the way of role playing and not just dice rolling.”

“That’s always the balancing act,” she said. “But I think it’s promising.”

“How long until you have the closed beta ready for us to test?”

Elisa shrugged. “Six weeks, maybe two months. Definitely not before WOWCon. But we haven’t even figured out how to get a screen large enough in a place where everyone can see.”

“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Darcy approached, having heard the last bit. “Bridge? Are we fighting bridge trolls next?”

Elisa forced a smile. “It was the metaphorical type of bridge. Some technical hurdles for the app.”

“Aha.” He shook her dad’s hand. “Thanks for setting this up, sir.”

“Thanks for coming,” Jim replied.

Then Darcy nodded at Elisa and left. Father and daughter glanced at each other in bewilderment. “What an odd duck,” Jim said. Elisa could think of other words, but for now she’d keep them to herself.


End file.
